Unprecedented

In over 380 Thursday night rides, I’ve been many a (relatively) far-flung place: southeast to the riparian wilds between Renton and Tukwila, southwest to Seahurst Park in Burien, northeast to the Marymoor Velodrome, and even as far northwest (with a little help from a ferryboat) as Poulsbo, Washington, on the Kitsap Peninsula, but never, in all my thirteen-plus years of pedaling out from Westlake Center, had I had the pleasure of the almost due north destination of Haller Lake.

And while Fat Rob’s route was more one Fancy Fred would have devised than the way I would have gone on my own, it was as perfect in every way as the velvety-smooth water of the lake itself, a body of water so quiet and calm that by floating on your back in it and gazing up towards the starry heavens, a person could go ahead and just merge with the Oneness like that, no extra effort required.

A spring-fed body of water, (I was informed by a couple of friendly fishermen who were packing up as we arrived), whose bottom drops off to the deep quite quickly (an appropriate metaphor for so many Thursday night rides itself), which Wikipedia tells me that the Duwamish tribe called “Calmed Down a Little,” for me Haller Lake, on the contrary, “Excited Up a Lot.” 

Who’d have thought one would find such bucolic bliss in the northern reaches of our fair city?

Perhaps the day will come, (and perhaps in the not-too-distant somewhat dystopian future), when gasoline is no longer available and I-5 ceases to carry steel and plastic boxes hurtling over it at a mile a minute and faster; the preferred bicycling route from Westlake to Haller Lake might then be straight up the Interstate; in that event, it might not be more than a decade before the ride returns.

In lieu of that, however, I will duly savor this unprecedented (for me) experience—undeniably worth the wait (and effort).